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From: edmoy@opal.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Switching fonts in ditroff
Message-ID: <5823@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 7-Nov-87 15:25:32 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.5823
Posted: Sat Nov  7 15:25:32 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Nov-87 02:24:44 EST
References: <3601@trwrb.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: edmoy@opal.berkeley.edu ()
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 38
Keywords: ditroff, fonts, typesetting

In article <3601@trwrb.UUCP> simpson@trwrb.UUCP (Scott Simpson) writes:
>one problem: ditroff doesn't do an explicit switch to the special font when
>it uses a special font character.  For example, in old troff, the input
>
>	Hello\(**
>
>would cause troff to change to upper rail, upper magazine (i.e., the special
>font) when it encountered the mathematical * character.  Ditroff doesn't do
>this.  It puts out the sequence
>	
>	C**
>
>which means to print the special character **.

I assume ditroff doesn't do an explicit switch to the special font to
minimize the size of the intermediate ditroff output file.  Since the
driver is supposed to use the same description and width tables as
ditroff, then ditroff expects the driver to use the same algorithm to
locate a character, and so the driver should automatically switch to
the special font itself.

>But special characters exist
>in the normal fonts too and I don't want to look up in a table to see if a
>sequence is in a normal font or a special font since you can add new sequences
>at whim to the DESC file and the table would have to be continually updated.
>Am I missing some obvious concept?  Why doesn't ditroff switch fonts when
>it encounters a sequence from a special font?  Any clean solutions are 
>appreciated.

As far as I know, that's life (with ditroff :-).

Edward Moy
Academic Computing Services
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720

edmoy@opal.Berkeley.EDU
ucbvax!opal!edmoy